Evidence for pattern development; mulling (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 03, 2014, 22:34 (3433 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Why “really”? Convergence tells us that organisms come up with the same answers. Your preprogramming hypothesis is no more logical than the argument that the same problems will elicit the same solutions from intelligent beings, and it is the potential intelligence (the IM) that has been present from the beginnings of life.-You want your intelligent beings to be way more competent than they obviously aren't. An IM is programmed guidance. 
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> dhw: I do accept the idea that God MIGHT exist (I'm an agnostic, not an atheist), and my concept of the inventive mechanism allows for his existence. The issue between us here is not the existence of God or the range of his abilities, but the possible autonomy of the IM, which seems to me a simpler and more convincing explanation of the higgledy-piggledy bush than your God preprogramming the first cells with every innovation and complex lifestyle from bacteria to humans.-You keep ignoring my stepwise programming concept as helped by Tony. I think the bush is because of a semi-autonomous IM.-
> dhw: No contradiction from you there, but now suddenly God's control of the environment has become a matter of degree. So if he is in partial control, are you saying Chixculub was an accident or an intervention? My point is that if humans were preprogrammed, he would also have had to preprogramme all environmental changes (to get the right environment and to prevent catastrophe), or to dabble, or to rely on luck, all of which hypotheses you now seem to reject.-You want too much exactitude about God. He managed to program our universe in a way that we arrived. Did he have to adjust the environment so we would appear? Again probably not. Might something unforeseen happen? Possibly. These are unanswerable sidetracks.-> 
> dhw: It would be interesting to know which ID-ers actually posit your theory that the genome contains 3.7-billion-year-old programmes for every single innovation and complex lifestyle.... I see no reason to assert, as you keep doing, that the IM is capable only of minor modifications and not of invention, which can only occur through God's pregiven instructions. On the other thread, you wrote: “To be precise: an epigenetic IM exists, its limits for invention are unknown.” That far more conciliatory statement is the basis of my plea for open-mindedness.-You want a very robust IM, as it reduces the need for a powerful God, and helps your agnosticism. I equate very competent early programming of evolution with a stronger evidence for God.